Commentary: Blood ties can thin, U.S. finds
DECEMBER 15 , 2005
Andy Mukherjee 

In 1990, when former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia called for the creation of an East Asian Economic Group, the United States was livid. James Baker, secretary of state at the time, called the plan an attempt to isolate the United States from rapidly growing Asian economies by "drawing a line down the Pacific."

At a November 1991 meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Seoul, Baker flatly told Foreign Minister Lee Sang Ock of South Korea not to back Mahathir's proposal.

"Malaysia didn't spill blood for this country - but we did," the Washington Post reported Baker as saying to Lee.

Staunch U.S. opposition sent Mahathir's plan into hibernation; it didn't kill it. This week in Kuala Lumpur, the proposal got off the block once again, with a new name: the East Asia community.

The U.S. response appears to be more tolerant this time. The administration of President George W. Bush is concerned less with recompense for spilled blood than with how to make the proposal benefit the United States.

"The future of Asia and the Pacific community will be defined around two great themes: openness and choice," Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, said in Tokyo in March. "Instead of an exclusive club of powers, we stand for a community open to all."

Analysts have interpreted the U.S. position in two ways. The political scientists Taylor Fravel and Richard Samuels of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology view the softening of Washington's stance on Asian regionalism as a sign that "U.S. declarations of its power in Asia are increasingly at odds with the facts on the ground there."

Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu, has a different take.

It is unrealistic, he says, for the United States to get too bothered about an East Asian community that "has yet to be defined - much less credibly emerge."

There's truth in both points of view. So while the United States awaits more clarity in the evolving regional alignment, it might do well to buy insurance against the loss of influence predicted in more alarmist scenarios.

The Bush administration may not need to actively oppose an Asian economic alliance as long as the community does not deny membership to countries based on a narrow interpretation of geography. One such country is Russia, whose admission would stretch the East Asian community all the way to Alaska. The United States, too, would then become a natural candidate for inclusion.

That is exactly what Japan wants, and China doesn't. China has persuaded Malaysia and other smaller countries in the region to thwart the United States by de-linking the proposed East Asia community from the East Asia summit, which took place for the first time on Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur.

Australia, New Zealand and India were invited to the summit; Russia will join at some stage. Participation in the gathering, however, does not guarantee these countries membership in the East Asian community. The community is expected to evolve independently as a closed club of 13 nations with China as the backseat driver.

Besides Japan, China and South Korea, the alliance will include the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The 10 Asean members are Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos.

A European Union-style monetary alliance for East Asia is far-fetched: Bad blood between Japan and China, and Japan and South Korea, may prevent the three from sharing a common currency even if Myanmar and Singapore could one day do so.

Dismantling barriers on intra-regional trade in goods will be the foundation of the community, and even that base is proving tough to establish. Thailand is peeved that South Korea's free trade offer to Asean does not provide adequate market access for Thai rice farmers. The same irritant - agriculture - is slowing Asean's trade talks with Japan.

Chances are even slimmer for making quick progress in unrestricted goods trade between Japan, China and South Korea, which together account for 90 percent of the gross domestic product of the proposed East Asia community.

Given that forming the East Asia community will be an uphill task, the United States can afford for now to treat it with benign neglect.

The Bush administration should, however, prepare a counterattack by multiplying 10-fold the measly $600,000 it spends annually on the moribund Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, forum.

A revived APEC, which is ready to add India and Pakistan when a freeze on membership expires in 2007, could be useful in launching an Asia-Pacific community to take the East Asian grouping head on.

But such a strategy will work only if the United States is ready to open its own markets for industrial and agricultural goods.

Merely talking about how much blood the United States has spilled defending freedom in Asia isn't going to stop the region from drawing a line down the Pacific.

Copyright © 2005 the International Herald Tribune